Benjamin Lapierre and Alexandre Gaudou do it all. These two French guys comprise the total cast and crew of Little Walk of Fame movie productions. They script, light, direct, record, edit, and take turns acting. The result is delightful, minimalist moviemaking of a sort that can inspire all filmmakers, especially those without vast resources. Their latest effort is “Copier Coller” (French for “copy and print”). Lapierre, who stars in the movie, shared his insights in the interview, below.

MMM: How did you develop your skills as a filmmaker?

Lapierre: We have never studied filmmaking, but we have always been passionate. We started with small videos on the iPhone to make friends laugh. Then, after seeing that we could make quality videos with only a smartphone, we participated in some French smartphone movie contest. We learned everything by practicing, it’s the best school.

MMM: Are there any filmmakers who influenced you?

Lapierre: We particularly like Chrisopher Nolan, David Fincher and Darren Aronofsky because they know how to erase the border between dream and reality.

MMM: How did you get the idea for “Copier Coller”?

Lapierre: The idea was born on a constraint of faking that we imposed ourselves: this double fixed effect. We knew we could do this trick directly with the phone, so we wrote a scenario around this effect. I think we were subconsciously inspired by Harold Ramis’ “Groundhog Day.”

MMM: Why did you choose to shoot using a phone rather than a traditional camera?

Lapierre: We started practicing our passion for cinema with an iPhone. We always appreciated the idea that with a tool that everyone has it is possible to make a movie. The writer only needs a pen to write, and the painter only needs a brush. We want to focus the video on creativity and not on technique.

MMM: Any drawbacks on using the phone?

Lapierre:  If you don’t maintain a high brightness when filming, there will be  a loss of image quality.

MMM: Can you tells us something about your crew?

Lapierre: We are only two. We live near Lyon, in France and we both have jobs. The videos are extra. Our days are well filled.Our goal is to make videos without big budgets and large teams. We handle all the jobs—scripting, lighting, running the camera, recording the sound, editing, and acting.

MMM: In addition to the iPhone, what other gear did you use?

Lapierre: We used a tripod, a steadicam, a portable LED spotlight, a wide-angle lens and a mini dolly-cam. All this equipment is available to anyone on Amazon. We have done all the work on iPhone with LumaFusion for editing, GarageBand for music composition, and Pixelmator for special effects.

MMM: Can you tell us how you achieved the surprising visual effect of duplicating yourself within a frame?

Lapierre:  The visual effect of double frozen is actually very simple.  We shot the scene twice on tripod. The frozen double is actually an image with transparent background (png) applied over the video with the LumaFusion video editing application. The effect of frozen water in the kitchen is based on the same principle but required a little more work.

[For more on the visual effects in “Copier Coller”, check out the  making-of video.]

MMM: During the production, did you encounter any major challenges?

Lapierre: We had problems with the shadows or reflections that prevented a nice result. We had to rework fixed parts of the scenery in post-production on Pixelmator. We could do it because the shots were fixed on a tripod.

MMM: Looking back, would you change anything?

Lapierre: The film is close to what we wanted, even better, especially the faking of frozen water. If we had to do it again, we would pay more attention to the sound. We had to deal with a noisy audio track in post-production because the original recording was of poor quality.

MMM: Can you gives us a hint about projects that you’re working on?

Lapierre: Every month we will post a film, a making-of filming, a tutorial and a presentation of material. The next film will show that it is possible to make a clean green screen on iPhone (shooting + editing). And then later we will release a short film mixing philosophical essay and sci-fi in a rather cool set that we found next to where we live.

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You can keep up with Lapierre and Gaudou on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

For more on low-budget moviemaking, see The Art of No-budget Filmmaking, our interview with Elliott Maguire.

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“Copier Coller” was chosen as a Mobile Movie of the Week by the editors of MobileMovieMaking.com